Monthly Archives: August 2012

Critique


Could not help but read a review on a film recently. One of my friends had given a link on Facebook and tagged me on it so that I could read it. Now, I love reading reviews on books and films. We have a couple of reading groups here were we discuss issues, current reading, films (occasionally) and theories related to culture, politics and language. One problem I find with reading random reviews done by amateurs is that they try to fit in too much jargon in order to criticize (or appreciate, for a change) each and everything. Some of them seem to be under the belief that to review means to criticize.
This reviewer (using the term critic would have been much simpler, I know, but you use it to mention a person who is a critique!) seems to think that to review you should be able to look at what others might have overlooked. I couldn’t agree because each person’s perspective of a work of art is different and you don’t need to agree with each other in case of criticizing/ appreciating it. This guy, in turn, has used a technique that lazy high school students use when writing a term paper; use as much as literary jargon you can use so that the teacher will get his/her brain roasted like popcorn! The review, in short, looked like a term paper. You’d need The Glossary of Literary Terms by your side to read/understand it.

Frankly, after reading the whole damn thing I didn’t have a clue to what this guy was actually saying. The review just went on talking about how this was not supposed to be there or how that was not supposed to be like that… Why is it difficult for these crocodiles to leave a writer just to write? The film wasn’t a great one to watch, I admit. The review should have been critical about the social issues that the film was trying to focus on but failed miserably. Instead, the reviewer went on talking about Feminist approaches and how a post 9/11 Muslim insecurity gets portrayed in the film. I wrote under the Facebook link that ‘post 9/11’ is quite an old fashion these days and it’s about time people (like him) concentrate on something else to have their bullshit off their shoes.

Tail end: – My friend asked me how I felt after reading the review.
I told him that I felt like overseeing a lab test of packet of shit. He hung upon me saying that the reviewer was his friend. I sent him a message saying that if he thought of himself as a best friend it is about time he should get his best friend to a shrink. I feel like Simon Pegg in How to Lose Friends & Alienate People.

Cover of "How to Lose Friends and Alienat...

Cover of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

My dear friend suddenly reminded me that Capricornians have a very bad time ahead!

Death Penalty


Unless and until it bugs me to the core I abstain from making my political statements public. The act of the Supreme Court of India on Ajmal Kasab would have been ignored by me if I hadn’t come across the verdict live on Wednesday. Terrorism is the most repulsive thing on the planet. Racism comes second. These two things, if eradicated properly can bring our planet to the path of development so that we can concentrate of other things like poverty and natural resources… anyway I’m not contesting for the Lok Sabha neither am I contesting for UN Secretary General’s post.

The Supreme Court of India has approved the death sentence of Ajmal Kasab made by the Fast Track court and confirmed later by the Bombay High Court. Ajmal Kasab is the sole surviving member of the attacking group that terrorized Mumbai on the 26/11 attacks. The attacks lasted for three days as Ajmal Kasab and his friends went on shooting and killing 164 people. All of his terrorist friends were shot down by the Mumbai Police during the bloody encounter that left several policemen and commandos of National Security Guards dead. The violent attacks on Jews and the Mumbai public left India speechless and cold. Kasab was part of the team that attacked people in Chhatrapathi Shivaji Terminus before he was shot down by a Commando. Later during the interrogation he confessed that the attacks were organized by Pakistan’s ISI and operated by the terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The international community knows Pakistan as a problem area as President Bush showered funds for the people of Pakistan as aid. The world came to know later that the funds went to arming the terrorists of LeT and the Taliban to the teeth as they plotted bomb attacks in Afghanistan and India. International political equations do not matter here because it is finally the people that suffer. It is notable that the causalities of Mumbai attacks included not only Mumbaikars but American and Israeli tourists too. A Pakistani American, David Headley, was arrested in U.S for making several trips to India to scout for locations in Mumbai for the terrorists to strike. Pakistan had denied giving any help to the terrorists as they themselves do not know who is in charge there.

People and the Media often discuss about abolishing the death penalty. Somehow I happen to believe that Death Penalty is a necessary thing in certain cases, especially terrorism. Now, Kasab might not be an important person in the organization/state that he comes from. Given the chance that he is an illiterate, blind-with-religious- beliefs-young man, he must have been brainwashed by the Mullahs and sent here to kill and die. They must have promised him virgins to enjoy in the paradise that Allah creates for the martyrs of Jihad. Whatever the case may be, he is guilty. I’m a common man, who watched a brutal slaying of people as brave soldiers of the NSG and the Mumbai Police paid with their lives to protect more civilians. I want Kasab dead not because I despise him for his smirk when a judgment was pronounced months before today, in Bombay High Court but to show to some people that we do not tolerate terrorism. I do not have false hopes that they are going to stop sending more young men across the border to create chaos here. But, I hope to send them a message that we are prepared… We’ve had enough of this!

If this strong sense of revenge makes me a lesser mortal, I’m more than happy to have that tag carried with me.

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